If you wanted to keep raids as a game mode, how would you increase participation?

[Firebeard.1746]

@"Fangoth.4503" said:Teach them how to play, give players interesting content in personnal story, increase personnal story diffuculty. After they get killed couple of time by a red circle/shockwave people will start to move out/jump/dodge, after they die by not being in a green circle a few time they will start to go in it, after the realise they can't damage a boss at all when there is a cc up the'll start to use their ccs.ofc it doesn't have to be a raid pace, i'd say addin 2/3sec more time to think and no moverlaping between mecs in personnal story compare to raid should do it but mechs damage should be as high as in raid if not increased to avoid skipping mechs. Teaching the players how to play is the way to go and they might start to realise if you do things well running toughness or vitality gears are wasting stats.

There are already mechanics in many parts of the game. The real issue is the mechanic design in raids that's overly punishing if one person screws up. CA is less technically challenging that WoJ in terms of mechanics any given player has to deal with. It's just if no one knows the shields and swords mechanic, there's wipeage. CA breakdown: Add killing? In fractals. Dodging telegraphed attacks? Literally in almost everything. Positioning? Also in fractals, DRMs, personal story. Running shields around? No where. Coordinating shields so one is off CD after two consecutive attacks? Only available in Discord during a CA run. Coordinating swords to pop the bubble? no where else. I'm using CA as a toy example, but there's tons of "mini skills" that are the lynchpins of raid mechanics (some requiring disc, others not, but still awfully foreign, or incredibly twitchy like the Sabetha SAK for passing a bomb to another player going up, which by the way is probably not doable with default keybinds given the timer, click to target? BOOM). Heck, all the players doing ley line every day know how to break a bar which is in many other raids. O yeah, break bars are in fractals too.

Let's stop lying and saying raids are hard because people don't know to play. That's false. People do mechanics all the time in many different areas of the game. I understand why mechanics like this are there, and it's just to create the illusion of difficulty. Every player has seen all of this stuff, most players have at least exotic tier of many different stat sets across different characters if they've been playing for a while, so the only REAL way to make them seem challenging is to create these super brutal off-mechanics in each one. And that's them playing to the target base, but it just hasn't aged well AT ALL.

[HotDelirium.7984]

@BlueJin.4127 said:Different difficulties like fractals so that even casual players can play with random groups.

THIS. T4 fractals are practically raids so why wouldn't real raids create tiers for difficulty as well? I can understand trying to be experimental but for a game that was known to be super casual and cater to the casual why then would you create a game mode not for the casual? or at least a mode where casuals could participate as well to some degree. If all raids had a level like a tier 1 fractal that would be a pretty dang fun and cool experience. Raids contain some pretty significant story lore that coupled together could actually be its own season.

[HotDelirium.7984]

@Obtena.7952 said:The following:

1. Make raids able to be done WITHOUT people training for them. Any notion people need to train for raids is 100% absurd. HOW? Raid mechanics need to be more familiar with all players in the game. Anet can do things like add raid mechanics to content people encounter more regularly, make those mechanics less punishing in those regular encounters and make the rewards of those encounters depend on how well people perform with those mechanics.
2. Make people aware of what mechanics they will encounter during the raid ... basically give players LITERAL warnings, prompts, etc ... so they know when to do things, where to go, what NOT to do, etc ...
3. Make those prompts an option based on an player game option.

Yes, basically, hold people's hands while doing raids ... and before you kitten on the idea, ask yourself if you want more raids or not?

If Anet addresses the ease that players can participate in raids at their leisure and be successful, any argument they can't find 9 people to raid dissolves.

Bottomline: if the average player can't just go into a raid and be successful, they simply aren't going to go.

Even though they consider it a casual raid/strike mission now. Lair of the snowmen had the perfect design- throwing snowballs, dps check on the minions leading up to the boss, the cracks, snowball mechanic all preview the mechanics of the boss. It all creates the perfect teaching moment. Throw in a few boss only mechanics that aren't too punishing and BAM, fun and engaging raid.

[skus.4527]

@"Ayrilana.1396" said:Open world content is not challenging. This is because there's very little that relies on the individual player and quite often just bringing more players is the solution. Death really isn't much of a penalty as you can just quickly WP and come back.

I quoted you, Ayrilana, but I've seen this sentiment said by lots of others, especially in the easy mode / hard mode thread that I've been perusing. To me, it highlights what a wide skill gap there is between players here. I'm a pretty new player - I have a couple 80s, but have been working through the LWS and I just got through PoF. I've done one strike mission - WOJ - no fractals, no raids.

My first 80 was a thief, for no real reason than that I wanted to dual wield pistols. Core GW2 was mostly easy, but got challenging toward the end. HoT got a lot harder, and somewhere midway through HoT (I think) I ran into a boss I just couldn't kill no matter what I tried on my thief. I spent a few days trying to get past it, then did some googling and rolled a necro because it was supposed to be unkillable. I'm happy to report I'm skilled enough that I can kill it :D

I got past that boss that was blocking me and made my way through the rest of HoT, then LWS3, then PoF. At this point, my "Commander" should be called Doctor, as in Strange, because most boss battles are rather a lot like the "Nozdormu, I've come to bargain" scene. The bosses are tougher, but I'm immortal, and with enough deaths I can get through them.

I see some raiders saying raiding is not hard, but then talking about how OW is dead easy and needs to be more difficult to prepare people for raids. And I'm about out of classes to roll to get past harder OW content. I'd like to see the raids sometime, maybe, but I don't really want to put myself (or anyone else) through the experience of jumping into something significantly harder than what's already difficult for me, even if it's 'easy' for other people. You're right about at least some of the OW metas - I tend to run AB/Chak Gerent / Pinata and sometimes a Teq, but if I die on any of those I'm not wiping everyone else. Raids, Fractals, Strikes ... those seem like different stories.

Maybe I'm unique and the only player like that out there, but I kinda doubt it. I like the easy mode raid suggestion I've seen in the other thread (like LFR in WoW), but otherwise I'm not sure what it'd take to get a player like me into raids.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:The issue is that they stopped adding increasingly challenging encounters in the open world and we're left with a population that knows nothing but how to zerg up, eat enemy attacks, and attack bosses with their auto attacks (or just skill mashing). Any time some form of challenge was added, there was complaints. There were complaints about every one of the episode end bosses of LS2 having too

challenging

of mechanics . There are players who struggle with HoT and PoF open world. The skill level of players in the game is very wide, and with having much of the game catered to those on the lower end, this has stifled any reason for players to improve.

I don't think this is accurate at all. I wouldn't call TP south meta easy.

It is easy. Players zerg up and then gradually split into three groups. No different than other maps metas like in HoT. The only difficulty of that fight is the hydra and that difficulty is marginal at best and especially if you keep it away from what you're defending.

I would also claim CA is less technically challenging than WoJ, somethnig people pug all the time, it's just that if you don't have 2 people that use swords/shields right and/or don't collect them properly you wipe.

What does one of the easier raid encounters have to do with what I said?

Alot of the newer metas are so punishing that if you don't have enough supports around you die.

Such as?

It doesn't matter how what dodge, you'll get hit by something once you're out of endurance. Drakkar is someting that easily comes to mind.

Drakkar doesn't require constant dodging. You only "need" to dodge specific attacks but even then that doesn't matter because of the zerg mentality that I spoke of where you can just rely on others to rez you.

I disagree. And this happens in Dragonfall as well. There's so much AOE if you aren't next to something healing and/or blocking you die.

Which new metas are "so punishing that if you don't have enough supports around you die"?

There isn't. If you played that meta, you'd see that what you're describing isn't an issue.

Except I have, multiple times. Perhaps more than you, otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion. I always dodge the telegraphed claw attacks and stay out of bad but somehow manage to get hit by something else on Drak. And I'm fairly certain I remember one of the 3 final world bosses in dragonfall meta having mean damage output. I don't remember if it was add quantity or actual AOE, but I was getting chewed up and my dodge wasn't enough to save me. Also, when attacking the weak spots with lots of adds, if you are not in the zerg, you die.

Without actually seeing you play then I can't really comment further. I'm done all three of those champions in berserkers without dying and didn't have an issue with Drak. I can't remember how my movements were for Drak but the primary reason that people get downed is because of the foot slam.

This doesn't disprove what I said that it requires support. I never said it couldnt be done in glass cannon, I'm saying the metas are increasingly requiring healing just to keep people up.

Doing anything solo that's scaled up will cause you to die. That in no way means that the meta is difficult.

Except I didn't say solo. I said get out of zerg, there's a difference.

Tp south meta is also very challenging. It can be failed with a full zerg.

This is because you drag the hydra to the objective and it takes too much damage. The damage the hydra does scales up with the number of players. The south TP meta is not difficult at all.

Well neither are raids.

If you feel that raids are not difficult then why are you talking about all of these open world map metas being difficult under uncommon what if scenarios?

I was saying they were difficult to equivocate them to raids, basically stating that they teach coordination, which is the main sticky point as far as raid design goes.

That doesn't make sense with what you were saying before but ok.

Perhaps you're misunderstanding me. If you didn't notice from my OP, I never asked anything to be downscaled. The only thing I've challenged is raid mechanic design, calling it out for not being puggable. I think if they removed and/or altered some of the obnoxious mechanics I've mentioned and called the raids a beginner friendly version, then they'd be puggable, even if individual player effort was even a little higher. Some strikes have boss HP pools comparable to raid boss ones.

So can Drakkar if people don't coordinate portals and/or you don't have mes who know what they're doing.

And yet players are able to. AB can fail if players don't do the mechanics and time the kills properly and yet they succeed. DS can fail if people don't kill the vinetenders in time as was what happened around when HoT launched. "What ifs" doesn't mean that something is difficult.

Also, Dragonfall is another meta easily failable without coordination.

No different than AB.

The difference as I've noted earlier is raids often require discord level coordination.

Not really. It's helpful for call outs as reminders but those that know the mechanics don't need it.

But how do you get to that point? By training with people over disc. That's the problem. If it was something that could just be done intuitively in a PuG I don't think it'd be an issue.

Discord is only easier because it's easier to speak than to type. All of those map metas in HoT failed often at launch. So no, they weren't intuitive until some players figured out how to do them and then taught players through map chat. Generally there are enough players that it's difficult for inexperienced players to cause a fail unless you're on an overflow with low population.

So you do agree with me that these are real mechanics? They're just not new.

That's not the point of the discussion so I'm not going to respond either way.

In fact I had a troll mes try to fail us once, they camped in one of the intermediate champion locations on Drak and intentionally ported my squad to it. We were able to recover, thankfully.

Troll players can potentially cause fails although it's rather difficult. This doesn't matter in regards to a meta being difficult.

So let me get this straight, you want our metas to pick 2 players, assign them a task and if they fail it, everyone dies and you fail the entire 30-minute long meta? Because that's essentially how many raid mechanics work. Except the players are often self-selected but I think that'd be even worse.

Please don't twist what I said.

I'd like you to explain. especially since now you've acknowledged some of these metas were difficult enough to fail at first. What is challenging content as far as OW goes? Because honestly the only mechanic I see missing are these insta-death ones that rely on a few people to execute well.

There really isn't anything in OW that is challenging. Almost every challenge in the OW can be overcome with bringing in more players.

But we already have both stated that coordination is involved in particular metas. I'm having difficulty understanding this in context, but okay. I still am waiting to hear what new mechanic or design you want.

I've just been noticing metas getting more and more punishing. I'd be really curious to see a full north drizzlewood meta that didn't devolve into a constant corpse run/rez fest if everyone is in viper's or zerkers, especially on the final boss. And to me, that's broken in the context of what this game was originally envisioned to be.

This is being drawn out further from what my post was about.

Open world content is not challenging. This is because there's very little that relies on the individual player and quite often just bringing more players is the solution. Death really isn't much of a penalty as you can just quickly WP and come back. If you get downed, you have 30+ people who can rez you. This is completely different from what's required of the player in raids as well as the success of the raid.

Your post erroneously claims zerging wins everything,

I said "quite often" so please check again.

then we talked about examples where that's not true, and you're still saying that.

Which specifically? Regardless, it doesn't matter as my argument was about open world PvE generally not being challenging and not because of a specific reason.

Like sure, that's one element that makes it easier than a raid, but it's not just zerging as many events have constraints and this is something we've both established in the past. I really was curious what you wanted to see in OW content because I feel like Anet keeps listening to people whine like this, so I'd like some quantification as to improvements because I don't think their listening has improved OW content either.

What I want is more mobs with interesting mechanics for when you're solo. I want more events which can't be resolved by everyone on the map zerging. I want events bosses which don't revolve around you just stacking at its foot and attacking it.

I do want to point out that this has nothing to do with my original post and I don't really want to elaborate further as I know Anet won't do it.

[Firebeard.1746]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:What I want is more mobs with interesting mechanics for when you're solo. I want more events which can't be resolved by everyone on the map zerging. I want events bosses which don't revolve around you just stacking at its foot and attacking it.

I do want to point out that this has nothing to do with my original post and I don't really want to elaborate further as I know Anet won't do it.

You might be right on that because this entire combat system is balanced around people stacking, heck it's still a major part of raiding.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@"Ayrilana.1396" said:What I want is more mobs with interesting mechanics for when you're solo. I want more events which can't be resolved by everyone on the map zerging. I want events bosses which don't revolve around you just stacking at its foot and attacking it.

I do want to point out that this has nothing to do with my original post and I don't really want to elaborate further as I know Anet won't do it.

You might be right on that because this entire combat system is balanced around people stacking, heck it's still a major part of raiding.

The "stacking at it's foot and attacking" statement it wasn't a criticism of stacking itself but how much of a lack of imagination there is for open world boss fights.

[Shaogin.2679]

Honestly the only thing I would change with Raids is to create better introductions to the mechanics of the raid fights. Going into a brand new fight and wiping over and over simply because you're trying to figure out what the hell is killing you isn't really fun, and most people will just wait for some sort of guide to come out for it. The Vale Guardian is a perfect example of a Raid boss done right. You fight the three aspects first, each of which introduce you to a mechanic of the upcoming boss one at a time. Hell, even something as simple as an npc that gives you a quick overview of the upcoming fight in some sort of cinematic or something would be a huge improvement.

On the other hand, Raids really don't need to be any easier than they already are. It is nice for the game to have some diversity for those that want more challenging content. There is already an immense amount of resources available to players that want to actually improve their game play and learn these fights, all from great communities of players that are willing to put in the time to help others out. The issue is many of the super casual players in this game simply want to spam auto attacks and get their rewards. Hell, I did a Boneskinner Strike Mission the other day with some pugs, and these guys literally face tanked every deadly mechanic possible and then blamed their deaths on the healers. When asked if anyone needed an explanation of the fight, nothing but crickets. Then as DPS players left, the remaining players wanted to solve the problem by bringing in more healers for a total of 4 healers, despite the fact that no amount of healing would save them from deliberately killing themselves. These are the same people that constantly bash on raids and the raiding community.

There is this huge misconception that raids are impossible to get in to as a new raider. I completed my legendary armor collection on a Necromancer by watching a YouTube video on the raid fights, and then starting an LFG stating that I was hosting a training run for w/e raid I wanted to do that night. I made some friends along the way, people would stick around in the Discord channel I used for the raids and join me on future runs, and often we would get more experienced players that joined us just because they wanted to help out. Then I moved on to raiding with Raid Academy which has been great for quickly finding groups to raid with on my schedule, and I still raid with the people in that Discord to this day. I also recently joined a guild of casual players, and got them interested as well in trying out raiding. After a few weeks of raiding only on Saturday nights, we finally killed Vale Guardian, and everyone had an amazing time. A couple of weeks later, we cleared all of Wing 1. These were not advanced or hardcore players, these were casual gamers with commitments such as jobs and families outside the game that limited their schedules and available play times. Yet we were still able to quite easily come together and enjoy raiding.

My point is, the raiding community isn't as toxic as everyone pretends it is. Raids are not as difficult as everyone pretends they are. Raids are not as exclusive as everyone pretends they are. The issue is simply the mindset of these players that hate raids. However, Anet has to cater to their player base and what makes them money so that they can keep the game alive. So if Anet wants to give up on raids because they can't support the small raiding community, then so be it. Sure, it would be a disappointment, but us raiders would just have to realize that we don't matter enough to Anet and we would have to decide if it is worth our time to continue in such a game. If Anet gets to a point where they can allocate some resources to continuing raid production, then great. What Anet shouldn't do is try to make raids stupid easy. At that point, they wouldn't really be raids anymore. They would be too boring for the raiding community, and the raid bashing community that wants to face tank everything would still complain about the difficulty and will never be able to complete it without someone to carry them through.

[kenny.7236]

I used to do progressive raiding in Rift but only raided like less than 20 hours in GW2. My thoughts :1) Reduce or remove 1 shot mechanic to a single player2) Reduce or remove mechanic that can wipe the whole raid due to the action or inaction of a single or few players3) Cut down on the ground aoe effects. Too many colours & flashes going off together4) Increase the effective range of boons & healing. No need to always stack together. Some can play range while some can melee5) If raid boss & loot is locked to account per week then consider making it locked to character6) Allow us more flexibility to setup our skillsbar, boons bars & debuff bars. Move it where we want on the screen & increase the size of the icons7) Allow more add-ons

[Firebeard.1746]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:What I want is more mobs with interesting mechanics for when you're solo. I want more events which can't be resolved by everyone on the map zerging. I want events bosses which don't revolve around you just stacking at its foot and attacking it.

I do want to point out that this has nothing to do with my original post and I don't really want to elaborate further as I know Anet won't do it.

You might be right on that because this entire combat system is balanced around people stacking, heck it's still a major part of raiding.

The "stacking at it's foot and attacking" statement it wasn't a criticism of stacking itself but how much of a lack of imagination there is for open world boss fights.

Well i was thinking about shooting down Charr copters, coordinating groups going into sub-bosses, pillaging an entire fortress, chaining a boss down before you can burn it (and doing lots of crap before that), picking the right boss out of an illusion mechanic, all from the last season, so sorry I misunderstood. I guess I have to say I disagree, but to each their own. I'm sure you're not requesting to boss stand on its head or side, right?

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Fangoth.4503" said:green circle = good must go inare present outside of raids eg: sirene reef, drakkar, whisper of jormag. pretty sure its also present in personnal story tooBut how many people should go in? Everyone, one person, a certain number of people? That changes a lot depending on encounter. And sometimes even within encounter (see different types of greens for Cairn - though at least in this case there is some sort of additional marking).

red = badare present like everywhereSure, but nowadays often the red is here only to inform you what hit you after you've been hit (and you have to look for clues elsewhere to be able to avoid it, because the area is way to big for you to avoid it if you only start trying to do it after you've seen it). Then there are several types of red, with diffferent meaning (but not really any explanation in game for the differences, beyond seeing it for yourself, so if you see it for the first time, you need to guess what devs had in mind this time). Or sometimes there are several types of red but with the same meaning (with some being far less visible than the others, and often getting lost in the overall SFX spam). Also, some reds can be dodged, some can't. Some can be blocked, some can't. In general, no consistency here.

shockwave = jump over itare present at tequatl, drakkar, franir, icebrood construct, vabbian fractal, i guess in some personal story instances tooYes, that one at least is consistent (although i am sure that i've run into a shockwave that could not be jumped over, and could only be dodged somewhere - and i am not talking about the "high shockwaves" from the molten duo berserker, as that mechanic never got repeated in later encounters)

the boss get a second bar below its hp = use CCsit's everywhere and yet players rely on electromagnetic pulse which is quite funny as they could do way more cc just by using their class cc.Except there are cases where you don't want players to CC. Like in the Dragon Stand final fight. Or the original Gerent fight (it's still present, by the way, it is just now possible to overzerg it).

and with that you know well over 75% of raid mechs.and the 25% remaining can still kill you without you realizing what happened. Not to mention sometimes the same mechanics are marked differently for different encounters, and/or work a little bit differently. Or the same/similar markings have completely different meaning (see the blue circles, which are sometimes good, but sometimes bad).

but i disagree less punishing will make them ignored as it is in world boss/personnal story... best way would be to increase the strengh of mechs in personnal story/world boss so players cannot hide behind memestrel (or whatever other meme stats) and actually start to use w a s d.Increase the importance of mechanics, but heavily decrease the importance of dps at the same time. Because, even now, the primary approach to mechanics (even at the higher end of play) is to try to outdps those (or find some other way to ignore them). And only do them if that won't work.

Teach them how to play, give players interesting content in personnal story, increase personnal story diffuculty. After they get killed couple of time by a red circle/shockwave people will start to move out/jump/dodge, after they die by not being in a green circle a few time they will start to go in it, after the realise they can't damage a boss at all when there is a cc up the'll start to use their ccs.And then they will go do VG, and die because they went to a green circle. Or cc Mouth of Mordremoth and get shouted at.

ofc it doesn't have to be a raid pace, i'd say addin 2/3sec more time to think and no moverlaping between mecs in personnal story compare to raid should do it but mechs damage should be as high as in raid if not increased to avoid skipping mechs. Teaching the players how to play is the way to go and they might start to realise if you do things well running toughness or vitality gears are wasting stats.That's again only if those story bosses won't be HP sponges. You want to teach either mech, or dps, not both at the same time. Because if you try that in personal story or other similar difficulty content, players will just get overwhelmed and learn nothing. You'd also want to ease a bit on using several mechanics at the same time in lower tier content - for example its the last phase in Voice that elevates it above earlier strikes to a raid-level difficulty. Which can be borderline justified in strikes, but also happens in story encounters as well.

Also, The one mechanic that should not be used (but very often is used in personal story encounters) is the bullet hell. Not many MMORPG players are arcade game players. If you use those types of mechanics, you are practically garanteed that players will try to find a way to ignore it somehow (by trying to outdps it, outheal it, outsustain it by going full nomad, or just by ress rushing).

Going back to dps vs doing mech - shifting emphasis from dps to mechanics more in raids as well would also be good, because there's already way too many cases where doing mechanics right is exactly the bad option, and the correct approach is to outdps them or ignore them in other way.(VG greens overheal and trying to outdps/outheal the last phase so you don't have to move in circles, and Gorse no updrafts strats come to mind - doing the mechanics actually makes the whole encounter much more difficult, so you are rewarded for ignoring them.)

Basically, if you spend a lot of time during player's journey through the game teaching them the importance of mechanics, the last step should not be "and now we'll learn to dps the kitten out of it and skip half of those".

[Dadnir.5038]

I didn't read everything so the idea might have already been given, but, If I had to "fix" raids, I'd just make them more accessible by having a:

• Single player mode
• Party mode (5 players)
• Raid mode (10 players)

Single player and party mode would do well in acclimating players with the mechanisms of the encounters which in return would make raid mode more accessible to new players. (Thought, this mean different rewards for each mode and different damage/defence scaling all while keeping encounter mechanisms).

Pactice make perfection, the more experience players have with the content the less likely they are to screw up in a 10 man version of this content.

[Cyninja.2954]

If I wanted to keep raids as a game mode, I would:

1. first off all keep them as raids, and not some watered down version. Assuming the goal is to keep the dedicated players who enjoy current raid content. For everything else we already have strikes and DRMs (respectively to fractals)
2. rework the LFG to better allow group creation, communication of what is needed/desired/required
3. make an active decision as developer to support the mode with X amount of releases over Y period of time, allowing the community around this content to work with a proper schedule
4. add some quality of life mechanics as guides or in game tutorials for players to read up. For example, WoW has an in-game almanac which gives a short explanation of bosses and enemies.
5. rework raid incentives, as was started with the introduction of LD but never followed through
6. try to reuses raid mechanics and developed assets in other game modes, if the devotion of a few developers for this content is not possible

Now that is what I would do in order to keep raids as a game mode.

If the goal is to NOT keep raids as a game mode, but merely keep the name "raids" for content that players can pat themselves on the back for completing with maybe even the rewards, I would:

1. introduce easier versions of existing content, lowering the bar required for success
2. severely adjust classes in such a way that the huge performance disparities between the bottom end and top end is reduced
3. add break points to raid boss life, as to allow players to death rush bosses and not have to restart the fight over and over

Which would basically keep "raids" in the game similar to strikes, but might attract a larger audience in the short term.

[maddoctor.2738]

@Dadnir.5038 said:Thought, this mean different rewards for each mode and different damage/defence scaling all while keeping encounter mechanisms

I'm trying to understand how you can keep all encounter mechanics and at the same time make it a solo instance. Let's fight the blue guardian, the one that spawns before you fight Vale Guardian. That one has a shield that requires boon stripping to remove, it's one of the core mechanics of Vale Guardian. How are you gonna keep that mechanic when a player goes solo?

[Dadnir.5038]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:Thought, this mean different rewards for each mode and different damage/defence scaling all while keeping encounter mechanisms

I'm trying to understand how you can keep all encounter mechanics and at the same time make it a solo instance. Let's fight the blue guardian, the one that spawns before you fight Vale Guardian. That one has a shield that requires boon stripping to remove, it's one of the core mechanics of Vale Guardian. How are you gonna keep that mechanic when a player goes solo?

Superior sigil of nullification?But, all in all, the "scaling" down could also devolve this boon into a mere protection.

Edit: I'm pretty sure preventing the whisp from reaching the guardian also prevent the boon to be applied, could make the boon duration low but bothersome enough to be worth preventing.

[lare.5129]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:The issue is that they stopped adding increasingly challenging encounters in the open worldwhy this is not ok? My fafvorite maos is Tyria, and I still open it with new chars, Hot open 9 times and never come come do it again.

There are players who struggle with HoT and PoF open world.As I say, I am that player. But if I sometimes open new map it is not hot/pof. So is we remap this in raids this is not any point add sum encounters,.

@Cyninja.2954 said:

1. first off all keep them as raids, and not some watered down version. Assuming the goal is to keep the dedicated players who enjoy current raid content. For everything else we already have strikes and DRMs (respectively to fractals)yes, we already have some group who do only strikes and only drm :) so add new is not extend other

2. rework the LFG to better allow group creation, communication of what is needed/desired/requiredwe already have lfm and lfg on raids.

3. make an active decision as developer to support the mode with X amount of releases over Y period of time, allowing the community around this content to work with a proper schedulethis is no any big point do it. We not increase stats wiht each update and make old raid soloble.is what I would do in order to keep raids as a game mode.

4. introduce easier versions of existing content, lowering the bar required for successwhat we point make easy version? on raid rewards is already low, and in we make lower version wiht more lower reward people will do onlce close achiv and forget that.The fun git golem is no maintream.

5. severely adjust classes in such a way that the huge performance disparities between the bottom end and top end is reducedno only clasees, but and stats. soldiet and zerk shouldn't not have so big dps differences.

6. add break points to raid boss life, as to allow players to death rush bosses and not have to restart the fight over and overmmm ... not bad o rmay be just let revive dead players?

[Fangoth.4503]

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@"Fangoth.4503" said:Teach them how to play, give players interesting content in personnal story, increase personnal story diffuculty. After they get killed couple of time by a red circle/shockwave people will start to move out/jump/dodge, after they die by not being in a green circle a few time they will start to go in it, after the realise they can't damage a boss at all when there is a cc up the'll start to use their ccs.ofc it doesn't have to be a raid pace, i'd say addin 2/3sec more time to think and no moverlaping between mecs in personnal story compare to raid should do it but mechs damage should be as high as in raid if not increased to avoid skipping mechs. Teaching the players how to play is the way to go and they might start to realise if you do things well running toughness or vitality gears are wasting stats.

There are already mechanics in many parts of the game. The real issue is the mechanic design in raids that's overly punishing if one person screws up. CA is less technically challenging that WoJ in terms of mechanics any given player has to deal with. It's just if no one knows the shields and swords mechanic, there's wipeage. CA breakdown: Add killing? In fractals. Dodging telegraphed attacks? Literally in almost everything. Positioning? Also in fractals, DRMs, personal story. Running shields around? No where. Coordinating shields so one is off CD after two consecutive attacks? Only available in Discord during a CA run. Coordinating swords to pop the bubble? no where else. I'm using CA as a toy example, but there's tons of "mini skills" that are the lynchpins of raid mechanics (some requiring disc, others not, but still awfully foreign, or incredibly twitchy like the Sabetha SAK for passing a bomb to another player going up, which by the way is probably not doable with default keybinds given the timer, click to target? BOOM). Heck, all the players doing ley line every day know how to break a bar which is in many other raids. O yeah, break bars are in fractals too.

nah the problem is game design. so far in pve if you fail a mech they give you a tap in the back and let you go away with it, so players tend to ignore it and then become surprised when they suddenly have to play around mechs.CA doesn't require discord, it require to remember when to use what and when to save it for next phase wich is fairly easy to get after few tries.What do you mean not doable? with normal keybing you have to press "z" and you have more than enough time to run over half the plateform before the bomb time out.You not being used to slow combat pace doesn't mean the game design is bad, just that you have to practice to get used to a faster combat pace.people know how to break cc bar? how come i'm always first CC in drizzle wood meta by just using basilic venom? why all these other thiefs cannot use it?

Let's stop lying and saying raids are hard because people don't know to play. That's false. People do mechanics all the time in many different areas of the game. I understand why mechanics like this are there, and it's just to create the illusion of difficulty. Every player has seen all of this stuff, most players have at least exotic tier of many different stat sets across different characters if they've been playing for a while, so the only REAL way to make them seem challenging is to create these super brutal off-mechanics in each one. And that's them playing to the target base, but it just hasn't aged well AT ALL.

let's stop lying and accept that outside of raid mechs aren't punishing at all so they are ignored. If players are that used to dealing with mechs, how come they suddenly die to mechs in raid?What didn't aged is the player mentality, games used to be more difficult and players were happy because it was more rewarding to complete the task, now it we want everything right now or we cry when they see something a tiny bit more difficult. "oh we want all skin but we don't want spend gold or gather materials", "we want to do raid but we don't want learn how to deal with mechs", makes no sence to have everything for free as you won't have anything to do in the game.

[Astralporing.1957]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:Thought, this mean different rewards for each mode and different damage/defence scaling all while keeping encounter mechanisms

I'm trying to understand how you can keep all encounter mechanics and at the same time make it a solo instance. Let's fight the blue guardian, the one that spawns before you fight Vale Guardian. That one has a shield that requires boon stripping to remove, it's one of the core mechanics of Vale Guardian. How are you gonna keep that mechanic when a player goes solo?Some builds can easily deal with boon removal on their own. Greens you'd have to reduce to only need a single player, but are doable. Of course, due to the mechanic of red guardian it would limit the whole instance to only condi builds (which isn't exactly a good idea - and coupled with the boon removal necessity would make this a mostly necro-only instance) - and you'd also have to do something about the split mechanic, because that one is just not meant for solo players. Stil, VG is not that bad - there are worse cases out there.

It's other fights, where there are several clearly separated roles that suddenly become a problem. I.E. in wing 4 only Cairn doesn't have one. Mursaat Overseer has 3 separate "roles" (floor clearing, shield removal and protection bubble) that cannot be used on single character. Samarog has the cc mechanic, and splitting the adds. Deimos has black goo, hands and second stage teleport... And that's only one wing.

[Fangoth.4503]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Fangoth.4503" said:green circle = good must go inare present outside of raids eg: sirene reef, drakkar, whisper of jormag. pretty sure its also present in personnal story tooBut how many people should go in? Everyone, one person, a certain number of people? That changes a lot depending on encounter. And sometimes even within encounter (see different types of greens for Cairn - though at least in this case there

is

some sort of additional marking).

It takes like 5min to understand how it works :#

red = badare present like everywhereSure, but nowadays often the red is here only to inform you what hit you

after

you've been hit (and you have to look for clues elsewhere to be able to avoid it, because the area is way to big for you to avoid it if you only start trying to do it after you've seen it). Then there are several types of red, with diffferent meaning (but not really any explanation in game for the differences, beyond seeing it for yourself, so if you see it for the first time, you need to guess what devs had in mind this time). Or sometimes there are several types of red but with the same meaning (with some being far less visible than the others, and often getting lost in the overall SFX spam). Also, some reds can be dodged, some can't. Some can be blocked, some can't. In general, no consistency here.

what red doesn't allow you time to react? In raid you always have 2-3 sec to go out or dodge

shockwave = jump over itare present at tequatl, drakkar, franir, icebrood construct, vabbian fractal, i guess in some personal story instances tooYes, that one at least is consistent (although i am sure that i've run into a shockwave that could not be jumped over, and could only be dodged somewhere - and i am not talking about the "high shockwaves" from the molten duo berserker, as that mechanic never got repeated in later encounters)

the boss get a second bar below its hp = use CCsit's everywhere and yet players rely on electromagnetic pulse which is quite funny as they could do way more cc just by using their class cc.Except there are cases where you

don't

want players to CC. Like in the Dragon Stand final fight. Or the original Gerent fight (it's still present, by the way, it is just now possible to overzerg it).

Which case? I know about the legend that says ccing fraenir makes its invuln longer but doesn't seem to change anything to fail CC.

and with that you know well over 75% of raid mechs.and the 25% remaining can still kill you without you realizing what happened. Not to mention sometimes the same mechanics are marked differently for different encounters, and/or work a little bit differently. Or the same/similar markings have completely different meaning (see the blue circles, which are sometimes good, but sometimes bad).

learn out of it and improve on next run rather than complain it's too difficult, you'll have a much more enjoyable playing time out of it

but i disagree less punishing will make them ignored as it is in world boss/personnal story... best way would be to increase the strengh of mechs in personnal story/world boss so players cannot hide behind memestrel (or whatever other meme stats) and actually start to use w a s d.Increase the importance of mechanics, but heavily decrease the importance of dps at the same time. Because, even now, the primary approach to mechanics (even at the higher end of play) is to try to outdps those (or find some other way to ignore them). And only do them if that won't work.

DPS is not important, you can do all bosses with very low DPS but it requires you to play well around mechs, sadly players failing DPS also tend to fail at mechs while player being successful at dealing with mechs deal high DPS as there is no point wasting time doing no damage.

Teach them how to play, give players interesting content in personnal story, increase personnal story diffuculty. After they get killed couple of time by a red circle/shockwave people will start to move out/jump/dodge, after they die by not being in a green circle a few time they will start to go in it, after the realise they can't damage a boss at all when there is a cc up the'll start to use their ccs.And then they will go do VG, and die because they went to a green circle. Or cc Mouth of Mordremoth and get shouted at.

Going in green at VG was the way to go for a long time and it still works, if the player need to go in it when learning then be it they'll have time to learn how to skip it when they get used to the boss pace.Don't shout at player for ccing, shout at all the players that didn't do enough damage to one burn mordremoth :)

ofc it doesn't have to be a raid pace, i'd say addin 2/3sec more time to think and no moverlaping between mecs in personnal story compare to raid should do it but mechs damage should be as high as in raid if not increased to avoid skipping mechs. Teaching the players how to play is the way to go and they might start to realise if you do things well running toughness or vitality gears are wasting stats.That's again only if those story bosses won't be HP sponges. You want to teach either mech, or dps, not both at the same time. Because if you try that in personal story or other similar difficulty content, players will just get overwhelmed and learn nothing. You'd also want to ease a bit on using several mechanics at the same time in lower tier content - for example its the last phase in Voice that elevates it above earlier strikes to a raid-level difficulty. Which can be borderline justified in strikes, but also happens in story encounters as well.

Look like a pretty nice sick loop: get overwhelmed => complain => content difficulty reduced so it makes sure you never learn how to deal with mechsYou cannot learn mechs by having them not punishing. No one sain in hit mind will go out or dodge a red circle if it doesn't kill him.Makes people able to fail story and the overall player skill will improve best in all that is that if players have to do 20 attemps to get the story done they will complain less about the lack of content =)

Also, The one mechanic that should not be used (but very often is used in personal story encounters) is the bullet hell. Not many MMORPG players are arcade game players. If you use those types of mechanics, you are practically garanteed that players will try to find a way to ignore it somehow (by trying to outdps it, outheal it, outsustain it by going full nomad, or just by ress rushing).

Worst is the lack of damage when failing it and being revived by NPCs. same goes for open world events, don't give rewards for failing them it makes no sence. favor good gameplay rather than encouraging player failure

Going back to dps vs doing mech - shifting emphasis from dps to mechanics more in raids as well would also be good, because there's already way too many cases where doing mechanics right is exactly the bad option, and the correct approach is to outdps them or ignore them in other way.

if you go in experienced group yes because they play for the reward

(VG greens overheal and trying to outdps/outheal the last phase so you don't have to move in circles, and Gorse no updrafts strats come to mind - doing the mechanics actually makes the whole encounter much more difficult, so you are rewarded for ignoring them.)

yeah it does either you work on having a good DPS or you accept not dealing much damage and then you have to focus more on mechs.

Basically, if you spend a lot of time during player's journey through the game teaching them the importance of mechanics, the last step should not be "and now we'll learn to dps the kitten out of it and skip half of those".

game isn't teaching them the importance of mechs, if you stand in a red circle then braham will revive you so its all good

[Miguron.3067]

Ive never played raids once, cause people are already impatient in strike missions, so not really in the mood to feel like trash

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Fangoth.4503" said:It takes like 5min to understand how it works :#In VG? In Dhuum? In Cairn? It took probably 5 mins for you only because you've had it all explained beforehand by someone that knew the mechanics. If you were to reason it out yourself, it would take a lot more.

what red doesn't allow you time to react? In raid you always have 2-3 sec to go out or dodgeIn raids, yes. In LS for example - not always so. And in OW the area covered by the aoe marker is sometimes big enough that the time you get is not enough to move out unless you're already on edge

Except there are cases where you

don't

want players to CC. Like in the Dragon Stand final fight. Or the original Gerent fight (it's still present, by the way, it is just now possible to overzerg it).

Which case? I know about the legend that says ccing fraenir makes its invuln longer but doesn't seem to change anything to fail CC.I gave you 2 examples above. Sure, they can be overzerged, but that's not the point.

DPS is not important, you can do all bosses with very low DPS but it requires you to play well around mechs, sadly players failing DPS also tend to fail at mechs while player being successful at dealing with mechs deal high DPS as there is no point wasting time doing no damage.That's only at the very top. In the middle, players that concentrate on dps fail mechanics, and those that concentrate on mechanics do no dps.

And then they will go do VG, and die because they went to a green circle. Or cc Mouth of Mordremoth and get shouted at.

Going in green at VG was the way to go for a long time and it still works, if the player need to go in it when learning then be it they'll have time to learn how to skip it when they get used to the boss pace.Sure it works, but it makes the encounter harder. It's not really advisable to teach it to any group that can overheal the damage (because why make the learning harder for them?)Don't shout at player for ccing, shout at all the players that didn't do enough damage to one burn mordremoth :)Like in the VG case, you are again teaching players that the way to go is to concentrate on dps and

ignore mechanics

. That should never happen.

Look like a pretty nice sick loop: get overwhelmed => complain => content difficulty reduced so it makes sure you never learn how to deal with mechsYou cannot learn mechs by having them not punishing. No one sain in hit mind will go out or dodge a red circle if it doesn't kill him.Did i say "not punishing"? I'm quite sure that i did not mention anything like that. I just pointed out that if you try to teach players way too many things at once, it won't work.Makes people able to fail story and the overall player skill will improve best in all that is that if players have to do 20 attemps to get the story done they will complain less about the lack of content =)No. They will simply stop doing the story. And, again, learn nothing.

Also, The one mechanic that should

not

be used (but very often

is

used in personal story encounters) is the bullet hell. Not many MMORPG players are arcade game players. If you use those types of mechanics, you are practically garanteed that players will try to find a way to ignore it somehow (by trying to outdps it, outheal it, outsustain it by going full nomad, or just by ress rushing).

Worst is the lack of damage when failing it and being revived by NPCs. same goes for open world events, don't give rewards for failing them it makes no sence. favor good gameplay rather than encouraging player failureThat is very tangential to my point here, you know.

Going back to dps vs doing mech - shifting emphasis from dps to mechanics more in raids as well would also be good, because there's already way too many cases where doing mechanics right is exactly the

bad

option, and the correct approach is to outdps them or ignore them in other way.

if you go in experienced group yes because they play for the rewardIn any group. As i pointed out, a lot of encounters are designed in such a way that ignoring mechanics (usually by the way of outdpsing them) actually makes them

easier

. Which means it is

definitely

the approach to take if your group is weaker.

Basically, if you spend a lot of time during player's journey through the game teaching them the importance of mechanics, the last step should

not

be "and now we'll learn to dps the kitten out of it and skip half of those".

game isn't teaching them the importance of mechs, if you stand in a red circle then braham will revive you so its all goodYes, currently it isn't teaching that. But even if it did, we'd run in the same point again - people would soon learn that mechanics are there to be

skipped

. Until that part changes, there's no point in teaching.

[ShadowAgent.6053]

Just bullet points

• Make relevant story content as raid encounters with flex grouping that works like in the DRMs (without the pre-events). Receive Tier 1 rewards once a week.
• Have normal mode like current raids for tier 2 rewards + tier 1 and repeatable CMS for tier 3 + tier 2 + tier 1 rewards (so like the fractal structure but weekly instead of daily)
• Normal and CM can have extra/optional bosses.

Side note: I don't like strikes from a design perspective, the gameplay is fun but they don't feel integrated or connected to the progression as they are. They are supposed to come after fractals and before raids, but I don't feel that works. "Boss in a room" type encounters imo work mainly for a mechanical challenge, but the strikes aren't that. Maybe if they were CM level encounters of old story bosses it might be funner to play them as something to go for after doing the raids.

[maddoctor.2738]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:Thought, this mean different rewards for each mode and different damage/defence scaling all while keeping encounter mechanisms

I'm trying to understand how you can keep all encounter mechanics and at the same time make it a solo instance. Let's fight the blue guardian, the one that spawns before you fight Vale Guardian. That one has a shield that requires boon stripping to remove, it's one of the core mechanics of Vale Guardian. How are you gonna keep that mechanic when a player goes solo?Some builds can easily deal with boon removal on their own. Greens you'd have to reduce to only need a single player, but are doable. Of course, due to the mechanic of red guardian it would limit the whole instance to only condi builds (which isn't exactly a good idea - and coupled with the boon removal necessity would make this a mostly necro-only instance) - and you'd also have to do something about the split mechanic, because that one is just not meant for solo players. Stil, VG is not that bad - there are worse cases out there.

It's other fights, where there are several clearly separated roles that suddenly become a problem. I.E. in wing 4 only Cairn doesn't have one. Mursaat Overseer has 3 separate "roles" (floor clearing, shield removal and protection bubble) that cannot be used on single character. Samarog has the cc mechanic, and splitting the adds. Deimos has black goo, hands and second stage teleport... And that's only one wing.

Agreed. I just gave the example of the Vale Guardian mob because that too has issues, although fewer ones. In general the idea of using an "easy mode" (or worse a solo mode) as "training" is never going to work.

[Fangoth.4503]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Fangoth.4503" said:It takes like 5min to understand how it works :#In VG? In Dhuum? In Cairn? It took probably 5 mins for you only because you've had it all explained beforehand by someone that knew the mechanics. If you were to reason it out yourself, it would take a lot more.

or googleing the thingy, these wing are 3+ year old and get thousands of guild more or less complete with tutorial video.

what red doesn't allow you time to react? In raid you always have 2-3 sec to go out or dodgeIn raids, yes. In LS for example - not always so. And in OW the area covered by the aoe marker is sometimes big enough that the time you get is not enough to move out unless you're already on edge

there is no raid encounter starting with L or O :'(

Except there are cases where you

don't

want players to CC. Like in the Dragon Stand final fight. Or the original Gerent fight (it's still present, by the way, it is just now possible to overzerg it).

Which case? I know about the legend that says ccing fraenir makes its invuln longer but doesn't seem to change anything to fail CC.I gave you 2 examples above. Sure, they can be overzerged, but that's not the point.even with low dps mechs arn't punishing. you just get interupted and that's it. only exception would be the tiny circle but 1year+in and people still fail at reflection or spreading which prove the point that people are not used to deal with mechs :3

DPS is not important, you can do all bosses with very low DPS but it requires you to play well around mechs, sadly players failing DPS also tend to fail at mechs while player being successful at dealing with mechs deal high DPS as there is no point wasting time doing no damage.That's only at the very top. In the middle, players that concentrate on dps fail mechanics, and those that concentrate on mechanics do no dps.

nah beginner have that issue. middle is knowing the mechs and improving your DPS, hence why lfg are requiring kp/li

And then they will go do VG, and die because they went to a green circle. Or cc Mouth of Mordremoth and get shouted at.

Going in green at VG was the way to go for a long time and it still works, if the player need to go in it when learning then be it they'll have time to learn how to skip it when they get used to the boss pace.Sure it works, but it makes the encounter harder. It's not really advisable to teach it to any group that can overheal the damage (because why make the learning harder for them?)

I don't know, its easier kill a boss with good DPS why don't player just do good DPS? not all beginner can overheal green, i've seen groups where it was straight impossible 4-5 where down at each green with seekers rolling over them. different player different skills, adapt your strategy to your level

Don't shout at player for ccing, shout at all the players that didn't do enough damage to one burn mordremoth :)Like in the VG case, you are again teaching players that the way to go is to concentrate on dps and

ignore mechanics

. That should never happen.

DPS is a mechanic by itself. and you seem to believe that it's hard to dps when it's not the case, reachin 80% benchmark on golem is enough to do descently in a pug run and it take 30min of practice to reach it as beginner and 5-10min for player that already have some other DPS class knowledge

Look like a pretty nice sick loop: get overwhelmed => complain => content difficulty reduced so it makes sure you never learn how to deal with mechsYou cannot learn mechs by having them not punishing. No one sain in hit mind will go out or dodge a red circle if it doesn't kill him.Did i say "not punishing"? I'm quite sure that i did not mention anything like that. I just pointed out that if you try to teach players way too many things at once, it won't work.whell the whole point of this topic is to have cheesed up game/raid. being overwhelmed is only there because player are not used to play the game with punishing mechs. mosts are irrelevant and if cumulating enough failure kill you you're not even dead it's ok you can be res. downstate seems nice at first but the game would be much more interesting without it

Makes people able to fail story and the overall player skill will improve best in all that is that if players have to do 20 attemps to get the story done they will complain less about the lack of content =)No. They will simply stop doing the story. And, again, learn nothing.

Also, The one mechanic that should

not

be used (but very often

is

used in personal story encounters) is the bullet hell. Not many MMORPG players are arcade game players. If you use those types of mechanics, you are practically garanteed that players will try to find a way to ignore it somehow (by trying to outdps it, outheal it, outsustain it by going full nomad, or just by ress rushing).

Worst is the lack of damage when failing it and being revived by NPCs. same goes for open world events, don't give rewards for failing them it makes no sence. favor good gameplay rather than encouraging player failureThat is very tangential to my point here, you know.

yes and no, my point is having the game focusing on making the content quaggan-proof you endup with player fighting like quaggan. having them failing when playing like quaggans they will have to start using directionnal key :) or stop the game but hey if they where just enjoying the lore when not having dev making a GuildWars audiobook that would give them the love without the annoying part of playing the game

Going back to dps vs doing mech - shifting emphasis from dps to mechanics more in raids as well would also be good, because there's already way too many cases where doing mechanics right is exactly the

bad

option, and the correct approach is to outdps them or ignore them in other way.

if you go in experienced group yes because they play for the rewardIn any group. As i pointed out, a lot of encounters are designed in such a way that ignoring mechanics (usually by the way of outdpsing them) actually makes them

easier

. Which means it is

definitely

the approach to take if your group is weaker.

then people should think about it and go train on golem beforhand? i've done so when starting and it definitively was helpful

Basically, if you spend a lot of time during player's journey through the game teaching them the importance of mechanics, the last step should

not

be "and now we'll learn to dps the kitten out of it and skip half of those".

game isn't teaching them the importance of mechs, if you stand in a red circle then braham will revive you so its all goodYes, currently it isn't teaching that. But even if it did, we'd run in the same point again - people would soon learn that mechanics are there to be

skipped

. Until that part changes, there's no point in teaching.

there is a point because you cannot do descent dps without dealing with unskippable mechs. and it's a bit issue in training, just go count a VG or cairn TP in a training group, some of these player would do better DPS by looking at their feet to not be TP and doing only autoattacks. and these teleport are the main cause of death when starting raids :)

[Krzysztof.5973]

@Shaogin.2679 said:Honestly the only thing I would change with Raids is to create better introductions to the mechanics of the raid fights. Going into a brand new fight and wiping over and over simply because you're trying to figure out what the hell is killing you isn't really fun, and most people will just wait for some sort of guide to come out for it. The Vale Guardian is a perfect example of a Raid boss done right. You fight the three aspects first, each of which introduce you to a mechanic of the upcoming boss one at a time. Hell, even something as simple as an npc that gives you a quick overview of the upcoming fight in some sort of cinematic or something would be a huge improvement.

Can you give me an example of raid mechanic that cannot be figured out within 1-2 wipes?